


Another Country

by Doyle



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 17:51:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Doyle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She was just laughing. In relief, tiredness, joy at being alive, at knowing that even with the whole world holding its breath her sister had gone on TV in an outfit picked to wind up their mother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Another Country

**Author's Note:**

> Written pre-season 4, subsequently Jossed.

"Our Gina was on the news." It was the first thing Jackie said when Rose finally got one of the techs to patch her through the phone network, before she could tell her that she was all right or that the world wasn't going to end after all. "She got in to do an interview with the President and the boss of them lizard people. Exclusive! Oh, but she wore the blue suit, the one that makes her look about forty. I told her… Rose?"

Rose squeezed her fingers into the corners of her eyes and had to assure her affronted mother that she wasn't laughing at her, she was just laughing. In relief, tiredness, joy at being alive, at knowing that even with the whole world holding its breath her sister had gone on TV in an outfit picked to wind up their mother.

"You sound shattered, sweetheart," her mum said, sympathetic now, her attention turned again to her oldest child. "Go home and get some sleep."

That'd be nice. All night and into this morning, as they'd waited for news from Downing Street and started countdown sequences on weapons they hoped they wouldn't have to use, her flat and her bed had seemed like all the planets she'd seen years ago, when she was a kid younger than Gina - nice memories, but places she'd never see again.

Her mum leaned towards the screen and said "Rose?" and the young technician said "Ms Tyler?"; she'd swayed and had to steady herself on the desk. Too old to go days without sleep. "I'll go home in a bit," she said. "Just got a couple of things to do first."

  
Telecomms was on the ninth floor. She could have cheated and gone up from there, but she took one of the service lifts to the basement and walked the whole perimeter of the weapons bay first, nodding to the few scientists and soldiers she recognised and wondering when she had stopped knowing everyone in Torchwood by sight.

The big, impressive things in the middle of the warehouse, the spaceships and the laser cannons, were mostly for show. Nice to look at, handy to show off to easily impressed funders, sod all use against an invasion fleet. The real power - and Rose was pretty sure there were only a handful of people in the building, in the country, who knew this - was with Dr. Li, Jake's deputy department head, who was sitting unnoticed at one of the terminals. Rose gave her a wide berth. You didn't disturb someone in the middle of powering down something she'd only ever heard called Operation Last Resort.

Admin, the next three floors, was all but empty. A couple of people were at the phones, fobbing off the press with the same statement they'd been giving after every emergency for the last ten years. Addie, listening to the newscast on an earpiece, gave her a thumbs-up as she walked past the desk. "There's an Angelina Tyler on here," she said, "any relation?"

There was just one person in the last office on Six: sitting on the floor with the lights off, arms curled around his knees and shaking. Couldn't be much more than eighteen, though they all looked so young, these kids, that she couldn't really tell. First timer anyway, she thought. There was always one. Sometimes they got over it, and sometimes they walked out and got a job where they could pretend the monsters weren't real, and sometimes she ended up calling round to their mums, husbands, wives and giving the speech about how sorry she was.

"Hiya," she said, crouching down beside him. "I'm Rose."

He looked at her, blank and confused. "Yeah. Rose Tyler. I know."

"What's your name? Sorry, I know I should know it."

"Gavin."

She reached out - slowly, slowly - and put her arm around his shoulders. "I'm going up to Medical, Gavin. Do you want to come with me?"

She didn't bother telling him that it was okay, it was all over. That'd mean explaining that it was just all over this time; that this had happened before, it would happen again, and he'd get used to it. Or he wouldn't.

  
"You doing the rounds?" The Chief Staff Nurse poured her a coffee. She took it, watching through the partition as one of the doctors led Gavin away. "I remember Pete doing that, every time. Used to be here hours after it'd all died down."

"You should've heard my mum go on at him. 'Even the President goes home sometimes but oh no, the world'll stop if Pete Tyler's not there to turn it…' " She blew across the top of her cup, then decided against drinking it. She'd killed enough of her tastebuds in this place. "How'd it go up here?"

He shrugged. "Couple like Gavin. All new recruits, bless them. Give them a couple of invasions and they'll be treating it like a fire drill."

"They're so young," she complained. "His mum and dad probably hadn't met when Lumic built the Cybermen. That shouldn't be allowed."

"Don't look at me, boss, I was only about five back then," Hex said, and laughed at her when she groaned and covered her face.

  
She made her way up one floor at a time - turning off lights, sending people home or down to Medical, talking to people she'd known for years and people so new they didn't remember her dad. She was the only head of Torchwood they'd ever known. That was a weird thought. A year on and she still felt like she was standing in while Pete was away, and that he'd be back soon to complain about the mess she'd made of his office.

Biotech were having their traditional end of the world party. Recruitment, two floors above, were eating microwave pizza and arguing with Linguistics and Anthropology over whether their brand new equal opportunities policy should refer to _Silurians_ or _Eocenes_. By the time she crossed to the lift humanity's new allies were called Earth Reptiles. She'd have to tell her mum, she thought. Better than _those lizard people_.

The higher up the building she went, the darker and quieter it got, until the doors slid open on the top floor. There was no department marker here, no Torchwood logo, nothing but a door and a security pad. Only four of them had ever had this code. Three, with Pete gone.

Mickey had made it there before her. He was standing at the window as she walked into the room at the top of the tower, where the glass pyramid stretched off into the dark above their heads and London glittered below. She stood beside him for a moment, her breath misting against the glass as she watched the lazy lights of the zeppelins circling the city.

"You okay, babe?"

"Course. Told you we'd be all right," she said; lying, but one of them always had to claim they'd known everything would be fine, and it was her turn. Next Armageddon he could be the optimistic one. "Where's Jake?"

"Checking in with Li, which probably means he's nicking beers from any department stupid enough to leave the fridge unlocked and all. He'll be up in a minute." Mickey ran his hand back over his scalp. Didn't matter that she saw him every single day or that he'd been going grey for years, it still surprised her. It was something that caught her at odd moments, like seeing more of Jackie in the mirror every year, like the time six or seven years ago when she'd suddenly realised she'd been in this world longer than the one where she'd been born. "I really thought this was it, you know? That this time was the big one."

She squeezed his hand, a Morse code _me too_ before she said, "No way. This lot weren't even proper aliens, were they? Just wanted somewhere to live. We've seen off worse."

"And not a shot fired." Mickey said, "D'you think…"

She'd known him her whole life, it felt like, and she could hear the rest even though he didn't say it. _D'you think the Doctor would be proud of us?_

"Oh, yeah," she said, smiling, and she reached out and hugged him. He swept her off the ground and spun her, and the whole city was laid out below her in lights and the sheer exhausted, dizzy joy made her feel like she was nineteen again, like it was possible to spin so fast you went all the way back to the beginning.


End file.
